Moira Macdonald

You leave The Assistant thinking about why some of us are invisible and some of us don’t notice — and about how evil lives in the places from which we look away.

I enjoyed Downhill purely for Louis-Dreyfus’ performance; we don’t get to see the “Veep” star on the big screen very often, so why not revel in her talent when we get the chance? As an exhausted working mom unable to keep from micromanaging the vacation — and a wife suddenly questioning her choices — she’s funny and moving and utterly believable in every moment.

Sometimes too many ideas collide into each other — a zippy back-and-forth structure in the screenplay gets abandoned, and the pacing in the final act feels off — but Birds of Prey is never boring and often great fun.

You watch wondering what good actors like Lively, Law, Jeffrey and Sterling K. Brown (as a former C.I.A. officer) saw in this muddy screenplay, and why Morano, best known for the Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale,” couldn’t find a way to make them spark.

If Like a Boss had a decent screenplay, and was competently directed, it might have been pretty good.

While occasionally the film wanders a bit too far into sentimentality (a scene involving a baby feels like it crosses a plausibility line), watching 1917 is an emotional and moving experience. You think of these two young men as one minuscule piece of an enormous tragedy, filled with individual stories.

This Little Women purist was moved to tears by this movie, and didn’t want it to end. Beautifully intimate, gentle and wise, it made me — and all of us — part of the March family. And what better Christmas gift could we wish for than that?

Ultimately, the film’s unwillingness to go deeper makes it fall flat.

You can imagine how other filmmakers might approach this — it’s a beautifully cinematic story — but no one else would film it quite as Malick has. This quiet, meditative and very deliberate film (nearly three hours long, though not a great deal happens) is at once historical drama, love story and ode to nature.

“Cats” the movie is deeply, deeply weird, and not in a good way.

Eastwood’s very good with actors, and the central trio of Richard Jewell make the film worth watching.

It’s a pretty picture and a sweet adventure, and sometimes that’s enough.

Johansson and Driver are remarkably, heartbreakingly good in every scene; showing their characters’ journeys to an unflinching camera, letting the gap between them get wider yet unable, for their son’s sake, to completely walk away. It’s a drama playing out on two larger-than-life faces; a family torn apart, and yet enduring.

Schultz has a lovely way of telling a just-on-the-verge-of-melodramatic story on a very human level.

Not every moment in the film works perfectly — Matsoukas, on occasion, slips the actors’ dialogue into internal monologue voice-over, which mostly just seems confusing — but Queen & Slim has a remarkable power. You watch it recognizing the world you know, and wishing you didn’t.

Ruffalo, as a character more polished and reserved than he usually plays, is compelling as ever; he’s able to convey the sense of time passing, with the case weighing down on him more heavily as years slip by.

In this season of Big, Serious Movies, what a treat to find this wonderfully silly, perfectly paced hall of mirrors hanging out at the multiplexes. It’s as if Agatha Christie came back for a visit, after getting caught up on pop culture in the beyond.

While A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is charmingly filmed (I loved the animated depictions of the toy Neighborhood, and the way Heller switches camera formats to give a more old-school portrayal of Rogers’ TV show), it didn’t quite have the emotional wallop I expected.

As a movie, The Good Liar is just so-so, but as a master class in performance and star quality, it’s a pleasure.

Whether you care about motorsports or not, Ford v Ferrari is a kick: both a rollicking true story well told, and a moving depiction of male friendship.

The Irishman is long, to be sure, but it’s never less than compelling — Scorsese, De Niro, Pacino and Pesci, all in their mid-to-late-70s, are each carrying a lifetime of work, with practiced ease.

The gorgeous, perfect final shot of Pain and Glory — I might have gasped out loud — will make you feel glad to be alive, and in a movie theater.

Its central characters never find much chemistry — Clarke’s Kate is a one-note character, which is one note more than Golding’s character gets — and I left Last Christmas with many, many questions, none of which I can share here without giving away too much. The elf costume, though? Just right.

Motherless Brooklyn is lovely to look at — the cast, in addition to their acting talents, all look great in ’50s styles — and I enjoyed the noir-y jazz of the dialogue. (“Everybody looks like everybody to me,” a bartender tells Lionel, who’s looking for someone in the shadows of a club.) But it’s easily half an hour longer than it needs to be, and it’s full of moments that don’t go anywhere.

Harriet is a handsome and surprisingly quiet film, taking the time to honor the main character’s deep religious faith.

You’ll watch knowing you’re in the hands of a master filmmaker; only wondering when it’s over how certain effects were achieved.

The fun of this movie — aside from the glorious and very velvet-forward costumes, by Ellen Mirojnick — is the performances of the two Hollywood pros at its center, both perfectly cast.

While Portman’s performance is skilled, she doesn’t have enough to work with — the character, as written, just isn’t there.

Gemini Man is full of the expected action and bullets, none of which is especially thrilling, but you leave thinking about those two faces — and about how movie magic keeps finding new tricks.

While Phoenix is always more than watchable (his scary-Fred-Astaire dance moves, born from Arthur’s habit of watching old movies with his mother, are both mesmerizing and disturbing), “Joker” really has nowhere to go. Its characters are one-note cartoony, but fun is the last thing on this movie’s mind; it’s all despair, from its opening scenes on downward.

What’s most appealing about Zellweger’s portrayal is the brightness that peeps out from the clouds: her deep love for her children, her sly wit.

This isn’t really a movie, but a delicious wallow, and regular movie rules don’t apply.

An odd combination of space adventure, psychological thriller and moody tone poem, it stops just short of dazzlement; instead Ad Astra, like an astronaut lost in space, slowly and majestically floats away.

Not all of Hustlers is beautiful, to be sure, but it’s always a kick.

It’s a good story, well told, though you have to forgive Hood for indulging in a little journalistic cliché.

The Goldfinch feels like a series of often-elegant moments, in service to a story that never quite comes into focus.

The film’s better than you’d expect from a late-summer offering, mostly due to a strong cast led by the great Oyelowo.

Is After the Wedding a great movie? No, not especially. Are these two women treasures of cinema? Absolutely.

Like Bernadette, the movie’s lost; you’ll need to read the book to truly find her.

If “golden retriever voiced by Kevin Costner” rings any alarm bells for you, steer clear.

All of this silliness is actually great fun, particularly the bantering chemistry between Johnson and Statham, who spend much of the movie squabbling and calling each other names.

"The Farewell" is so unexpectedly and deliciously funny that watching it feels like a tonic — an immersion in love and art.

A taut, gripping documentary about one young woman’s dream ... Maiden is wonderfully suspenseful — especially if you, like me, have no idea how the race turned out.

Ultimately, despite Nanjiani’s best efforts, it’s a disposable fast-car summer movie, neither terrible or good, for those biding their time before the next “Fast & Furious” installment.

This film celebrates Halston’s work but shows more interest in the man — and the unexpected corporate drama — behind it.

Much of the film’s pleasure is in hearing Morrison speak.

Sometimes, a movie can just make you feel better, and that’s no small gift.

None of these stories feel monumental, and all of them resolve themselves neatly in a quarter-hour or so. But they have a kindness to them; a way of seeing people as they are, with their flaws and their goodness.

Like the toys of a child now-grown, or an antique lamp gathering dust on a shelf, “Toy Story 4” isn’t needed. But it is, for many of us, very much wanted: one last adventure, one last chance to say goodbye.

Like Kaling’s Molly, Late Night is immensely likable; so much so that you wish it were perfect.

The Dead Don’t Die isn’t just deadpan — it’s dead.

You feel for the actors, who you know are better than this stuff, and you wonder if director F. Gary Gray (“Straight Outta Compton”) just threw up his hands. And you wonder if, somewhere, Smith and Jones are chuckling. At least somebody was.

Olivia Wilde’s raunchy yet adorable high-school comedy Booksmart understands a basic truth: For so many former teenage girls, your first love is your high-school best friend.

It’s all quite wistfully romantic, and mostly winningly so, despite the sometimes wise-way-beyond-their-years dialogue and not always plausible plot.

It’s a haunting, heartbreaking story, told by a movie that never quite makes a case for itself to exist.

Hathaway and Wilson, instead of exuding odd-couple comic chemistry, seem to barely be in the same movie; they don’t click, with each other or with a bland Alex Sharp as their tech-bro mark.

It’s a movie full of small pleasures.

It’s a raunchy comedy, with a plot that ends up hinging on a very R-rated video. And, most surprising of all, it’s also a conventional and rather sweet rom-com.

There’s exactly one good jump-scare, which probably would have caused me to drop my popcorn if I hadn’t finished it already; otherwise it’s fairly uninspired. But something about Quaid’s delivery had me giggling throughout — or, at least, until things got rather too dark in the final minutes.

You sense that this woman has spent a lifetime not saying things, and that all she wants is to quietly be allowed to fade away.

Oh yes indeed. Avengers: Endgame brought it...This film had an insanely difficult job to do — to gracefully and tidily wrap up a 22-movie Marvel Comics cycle with a cast list bigger than the Hulk, and to do so with both poignancy and hold-your-breath action — and it delivers.

Watching Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s multilayered “Birdman” is like unfolding a piece of intricate origami; it keeps opening in unexpected directions.

Fascinating.

It’s a quick, funny movie.

But Martin — who at age 10 came up with and pitched the idea for this movie (she’s now 14) — carries this movie on her small, resolute shoulders.

Painstakingly reassembled by producer Alan Elliott (Pollack, who never gave up hope on the project, died in 2008), Amazing Grace shows us an artist at the peak of her powers.